Katmandu! How do I begin to describe this crazy place? Narrow, muddy, rutted streets packed with bicycles, motorcycles, cars and pedestrians carrying every sort of load imaginable and honking constantly. Teeny, dirty, crowded stores overflowing with bizarre merchandise. People, people everywhere, walking, selling, carrying, bargaining. What a place!

I slept like a LOG last night and was jangled awake by the alarm at 8. We had breakfast in the hotel (Nepalese--flat bread, fried potatoes and lassi). At 10 our guide came over and we went to the bike store to rent bikes. This place, that has a nice website, was a closet-sized hole-in-the-wall with 20 or so 15-year old bikes to rent. We were aghast at first, but then settled down to the business of finding the best of a sorry lot. We spent 2 hours there, inspecting, testing, and negotiating, and finally made our deal to rent 8 bikes for 18 days. (NOTE: Bringing our own bikes here was not an option. Air India wanted 40 Euros per kilogram each way for excess baggage!)

Next stop was the money changer where we spent another 30 minutes. Nothing is done quickly here! Euros are not coveted in this part of the world, but dollars are welcome everywhere. The rupi is at 100 to 1 Euro, which makes conversion and bargaining easy.

From there we went to the guide service office to fill out all of our paperwork for the Chinese Visa mission tomorrow, and pay the bill for our trip.

Then it was off to the outfitter to rent sleeping bags for those in the group that didn't have them. Another hole-in-the-wall shop teeming with stuff and more lengthy and animated negotiations. I get sucked into all of this because I am the best english speaker (obviously) so frequently end up as the spokesperson for the group.

We didn't start lunch until after 2 and didn't finish until after 3. The food (some dumpling soup and some sweet pasta stuff for dessert) was again very good, but again I left hungry. I've been hungry since we got here. I guess I'll lose some weight on this trip! I've already broken into my stash of powerbars but need to save them for when I really need them.

Errands done, now it was time for some sightseeing. We made our way through the teeming streets (a big adventure in itself!) to the Durbar Sqare--a world heritage monument zone. Along the way we came across two more bike stores, with equally bad mountain bikes but much cheaper prices, so tomorrow we'll be reopening the bike price negotiations. Durbar Square is a concentration of temples and a palace, dating from the 1500's. It was a big tourist area, so full of street vendors and beggars. I am a magnet for them all because I smile too much. The others in the group are teasing me as I seem to attract all the rif raf. The others are teaching me to scowl and say no.

To get back to the hotel we had an adventurous bicycle taxi ride. The poor guy had 3 of us crammed in to his little taxi, and pedaled this machine that weighed a ton and had only one gear through the muddy, crowded streets all the way across town. The price: 1 Euro! Being cyclists, we appreciated his effort so paid him two.

Back in the room the electricity is off once again. They have rolling blackouts of 2 hours all the time here. But we are in a nice hotel, so each have a single dim bulb powered by a big battery at the front desk in our room for the dark hours. I need to wait for electricity to be able to upload this. So it' off to dinner first!

Below and to the left are assorted street scenes of the day. I took a video, too, but am having trouble uploading it with this slow connection. I'll keep trying....